When someone accused J R R Tolkien of writing escapism, Tolkien apparently replied: “Maybe, but it’s not the escape of a deserter from the front lines, but of a prisoner from a cage.”
These two types of escapism are a good description of the two ways that stories can function. Borrowing from Andrew Fellows from L’Abri, I’ll label the escape of the deserter as “Fantasy” and the escape of the prisoner from the cage as “Imagination”. Let me try and explain a bit better…
By Imagination, I mean stories that take us beyond ourselves, that broaden our horizons, that give us new windows on the world. C S Lewis explained in An Experiment in Criticism that he saw Imagination as what made stories worthwhile (although he didn’t use that term specifically). Here’s what he said:
What then is the good of – what is even the defence for – occupying our hearts with stories of what never happened and entering vicariously into feelings which we should try to avoid having in our own person? Or of fixing our inner eye earnestly on things that can never exist…? The nearest I have yet got to an answer is that we seek an enlargement of our being. We want to be more than ourselves. Each of us by nature sees the whole world from one point of view with a perspective and selectiveness peculiar to himself… We want to see with other eyes, to imagine with other imaginations, to feel with other hears, as well as with our own… We demand windows. Literature as Logos is a series of windows, even of doors…
This is escapism, not to get away from reality, but to discover new ways of seeing reality. Storytelling, including science fiction and fantasy, which I particularly enjoy, are at their best Imagination – they expands us, give us new ways of seeing the world. That a woodland glade may lead to fairyland or a Police Box may in fact be a time machine in disguise helps open our minds to the possible wonders of the world around us. Through seeing the world around us through the eyes of other characters with perspectives very different from our own, we are helped to see beyond our own horizons, to transcend the narrow limitations of our own particular experience and perspective.
Fantasy on the other hand are stories merely as distraction, escape from reality. Fantasy is to Imagination what pornography is to real relationships. Fantasy never challenges us, or makes demands. It only serves to gratify our existing tastes, rather than to give us an appreciation of new things. Probably the majority of entertainment in the media functions as Fantasy.